


Snake food

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alien Biology, M/M, cottage in the south downs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 09:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16616378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Based on Not-a-space-alien's post on tumblrAziraphale discovers rats in the cottage, Crowley has a rather unique way of getting rid of them





	Snake food

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I really like the hc that Crowley’s yellow eyes aren’t the only snake thing about him](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/432446) by Not-a-space-alien. 



> This story on tumblr: https://elsinore-and-inverness.tumblr.com/post/180062646820/gingercrawford-not-a-space-alien-i-really

“I saw a rat in the kitchen this morning,” Aziraphale said, looking rather like he’d prefer to uproot and head back to London than sort it out himself.

“Nuh-uh. Rats are big things. Tails like earthworms.” Crowley traced in the air a shape about twice the size of a brown rat. 

“You saw the one in the kitchen?”

“Nope.”

“Well. There’s an exterminator in the yellow pages.”

“Nobody uses yellow pages anymore, angel.”

“It’s on the shelf.” The shelf in question was a dimensionally transcendental organizational nightmare painstakingly alphabetized by the third word on page fifteen, bookended by two dozen geraniums.

“There are three in there,” Crowley said, not looking at the shelf “which one do you want me to call?”

“Just pick one, I don’t know.”

Crowley briefly wondered why, besides the angel’s exquisite laziness, Aziraphale hadn’t just miracled the rats out of the house, but considered that that kind of thing does start to slip your mind after six thousand years.

“I’ll sort it out.”

“Good. I really need to focus on restoring these manuscripts-”

“Have fun.”

“That’s not the point, Crowley.”

“Mmm-hmm. Bye.” The demon kissed Aziraphale’s cheek as he left.

Crowley was hungry. Was champagne tea in Brighton yesterday or the day before? He wandered in the direction the kitchen, the bare scales of the soles of his feet sliding on the floor like socks might do on hardwood. 

The rat Aziraphale had seen was still in the kitchen, hiding under the dishwasher… and it smelled good. Crowley closed his eyes and tasted the air with his tongue. It was all he could do to stop himself dropping to all fours and swallowing it then and there, and he could smell more of them under the floor. With difficulty Crowley tore himself away to try to consider the situation more practically. Aziraphale didn’t know he ate rodents. Aziraphale would want the floorboards more or less intact.

Crowley didn’t really own many old clothes, besides some ratty* pajamas he used to keep in Aziraphale’s shop, so what he ended up wearing when he returned to find the chink in the floorboards was a Disneyland Paris t-shirt several sizes too big and a pair of pajama pants from Primark inexplicably pattern printed with the Queen logo.

Aziraphale shouldn’t be back until seven.

Crowley could feel the warmth of the scurrying forms before he saw them. It had been a long time since he had eaten rat, but he remembered what it was like, and he was hungry and they smelled so good. Something reptilian in his brain had taken over. Something equal parts demon and animal**. He unhinged his jaw and had swallowed two rats by the time he heard the sound of heavy familiar footsteps on the gravel path outside. Hurriedly he took a third rat into his mouth and then heard the turn of a key in the lock. Not only had Aziraphale come home early, he’d come through the kitchen door.

Crowley froze, every muscle in his body stopped moving, the rat lodged in his throat still alive. He was actually choking, because both the reflex for swallowing and breathing had stopped.

Aziraphale looked down at him, kneeling in the torn up kitchen floor, head tilted back towards the ceiling, the hind quarters of a large rodent visible between his stretched lips and jaw in a position mammalian mandibles are not meant to be.

“My dear, what the fuck.” 

A hundred thoughts flashed through Crowley’s mind, mostly to the tune of dread that this would change how the angel saw him. That he’d driven a crack in the facade of personhood he’s built up and was found out now. 

He wanted to explain but he couldn’t. It took several seconds for him to relax enough to even continue swallowing.

When he finally had, he couldn’t look at Aziraphale. He just sort of curled in on himself, trying to pretend this wasn’t happening. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that.

Eventually he felt a hand on his back, but he didn’t move. He didn’t move until Aziraphale had gone to the bedroom, found what he had left behind and gone out again. 

Aziraphale didn’t mention the rats until several weeks later one night in front of the fire that he pointed out to Crowley that “all of you is you, even the part that hears ‘call the exterminators’ as ‘eat lunch.’”

 

 

*not literally

**and not necessarily non-human, it just tends to take them longer to get to that state


End file.
